Another cloud account?!? Or: Why I didn’t buy an Eye-Fi card

I need an Internet connection and account to use offline features? No thanks.

I love technology. I hardly know what to do with myself these days if there isn't some sort of touchscreen device or glowing screen attached to a keyboard at my fingertips.

But I don't love everything about technology—or the decisions made by tech companies. One thing I hate is the trend of gadgets that force you to sign up for a new Internet service just to unlock features that are offline-only. If a piece of hardware is physically capable of performing its most important task without logging on to the Internet, there's no reason it should always be phoning home to some company's servers or forcing me to sign into a cloud service.

Case in point: I recently bought a new camera and decided it was time to get some wireless syncing capability. Taking an SD card out of a camera and jamming it into the appropriate slot on a computer? That's so 2009! I'm no peasant.

I needed a wireless SD card. The first name that popped into my head was "Eye-Fi," so the company's marketing is obviously working. To me, Eye-Fi was synonymous with wireless SD cards like Google is synonymous with search.

Since Eye-Fi memory cards have Wi-Fi built in, you can shoot pictures on a camera and send the images to a phone, tablet, or computer right away, over the air. (Yes, some cameras have wireless built in these days, but mine doesn't.) I read some customer reviews, and most everyone had good things to say about Eye-Fi. I started thinking about what size card to buy, but before pulling the trigger I wanted to see how the system works in practice.

So I downloaded the Eye-Fi iOS app. I didn't have a card to use it with, of course, but I figured I could navigate the interface and see whether transferring pictures would be easy and intuitive. I opened the app and was greeted with this screen:

That's right. To use Eye-Fi, you need to register an account with your e-mail address and a password. But what if you just want to send pictures from your camera to your phone once in a while, without connecting to the Internet? Eye-Fi is more than capable of creating an ad hoc wireless network consisting of just your camera and another device. Internet connectivity shouldn't be a prerequisite to using Eye-Fi, because its most essential feature can be performed without an Internet connection.

You know how often I intend to connect my wireless SD card to the Internet? Never. I probably won't even use it all that often. I may occasionally take a picture with my new awesome camera and want to e-mail or text it to someone. In those instances, I want to be able to transfer the picture to my phone no matter where I am. For that, I don't need to connect to Eye-Fi's servers in some big data center somewhere, and I don't need the company collecting and storing any of my personal information. There are already 7 billion photo sharing services—I don't need another one.

I demand answers!

To make sure I wasn't misunderstanding how Eye-Fi works, I did some searching to see if it can be used without first logging on to the company's servers. I wasn't the only one asking.

"One detail I don't quite get: I'll only use the card (Pro X2) to transfer files from my camera to my laptop, and not to sharing sites/services. Do I need to connect to Eye-Fi for that? An account with Eye-Fi?" one person considering an Eye-Fi purchase asked on the company's forums. "It seems all I should need is the Eye-Fi card, and perhaps to download a firmware update if applicable—as is the case with all other hardware I have—is that not the case with this?"

Although Eye-Fi has a "Direct Mode" that transfers photos directly from the card to your mobile device without an Internet connection, this can't be used until you have an online account with Eye-Fi, the company's user instructions note. On a privacy policy page, the company assures customers that "Eye-Fi is committed to protecting the confidentiality of your personal information."

Photos aren't uploaded to Eye-Fi servers unless customers choose to use extra features like Eye-Fi's cloud storage, automatic sharing to Facebook and other sites, or an Eye-Fi geotagging service.

"When you access your Eye-Fi account and utilize Eye-Fi services, Eye-Fi automatically records certain information about your use, such as account activity, data displayed or clicked on, and other information including browser type, IP address, date and time of access, cookie ID, and referrer URL," the company says. "Some of this information collected, such as IP address and the contents of certain cookies, may include personal information."

Why not give people who spend anywhere from $40 to $100 on Eye-Fi cards the ability to use the hardware's inherent capabilities without logging on to Eye-Fi servers? I contacted Eye-Fi's public relations team directly to find out. Here's the e-mail exchange we had:

Me: Why is an online account is needed, and what is it used for?

Eye-Fi: An online account enhances users’ experiences as it allows them to customize the card based on their needs. The online account provides access to all of a user's images in one place. From here, users can also set up Direct Mode, designate Wi-Fi hotspots or social media sites to post photos and gain access to all the features in the Eye-Fi Center, like Eye-Fi's cloud service, Eye-Fi View.

Me: Is there any way to use Eye-Fi without creating an online account?

Eye-Fi: Since the online features are closely integrated with the cards, there is no way to use Eye-Fi without creating an online account.

Me: What if you aren't connected to the Internet when you want to transfer pictures from your camera to your phone?

Eye-Fi: Sounds like Direct Mode is your answer: You can turn on Direct Mode when you're setting up the card in Eye-Fi Center [an online service]. And once you have the Eye-Fi app on your mobile device, your Eye-Fi card will first look for Wi-Fi, and if it's not within range of an existing network it'll create its own Wi-Fi network. That way you can transfer pictures anywhere.

All's well that ends well

Having ruled out Eye-Fi on principle, I decided to find an alternative. There aren't many, as Eye-Fi was first in this market, but the most viable one I found is the recently released Transcend. Like Eye-Fi, it's a Wi-Fi-enabled SD card that can transfer photos to apps on iOS and Android or to your computer.

For $50, I got a 16GB card with Class 10 speed—half the price of the equivalent Eye-Fi card—perfectly usable without any sort of online account. The card broadcasts a Wi-Fi network, which any device can connect to (it's password-protected, and you can change the password). On mobile devices, you use an app to grab the pictures, and on your computer you use a Web browser. The user experience is straightforward enough:

It lacks some of the bells and whistles that Eye-Fi has, such as Eye-Fi's "Endless Memory" feature that automatically frees up space on your memory card when it's close to full. The user experience for Transcend is sometimes rough as well. Transcend offers an "Internet Mode" that lets you connect the card to the Internet using a Wi-Fi hotspot or your phone's personal hotspot feature. I tested it just to see if it would work, but it didn't, and I quickly gave up trying because the direct-share feature does everything I want the card to do anyway.

All of this is not to say that online accounts or automatic connections to cloud servers are inherently bad. After all, many great services simply wouldn't function without them (say, Dropbox, or apps that sync your reading lists across devices).

But we've seen a trend of companies adding always-on Internet functionality and account requirements to products that would work just fine without them. There were the cases of Cisco replacing its routers' management interface with a cloud service and Razer requiring a mouse to connect to the Internet to unlock all its functionality.

I've got dozens of online accounts, so I'm not avoiding these services when they make sense. Eye-Fi's cloud service probably has great features for those who want it, and there's no reason Eye-Fi shouldn't offer it. But it should be an option, not a requirement.

UPDATE JULY 6, 2013: A little over five months after this article was published, I received an e-mail from Eye-Fi's new CEO, Matt Dimaria. Eye-Fi recently released a new memory card called Mobi, he said. Unlike Eye-Fi's previous products, Mobi can be used with just a camera and mobile device connected directly to each other via Wi-Fi, with no cloud account or Internet connection required. Progress!

Promoted Comments

When configured for direct mode, the EyeFi cards also present themselves as a WiFi network that you connect your phone/whatever to. The retarded thing is, just as Jon discovered, to configure the card or to fire up the app (on iOS at least) you need to have an account with them.

Unfortunately I was oblivious to all this when we got ours a couple of years ago. I used a throwaway spam account to sign up; doing that didn't make it any less irritating that they're basically set up to demand that you register with them, but it did mean that they didn't get anything useful from me.

The stupidity continues when you get to their Windows client. Even if you only want to configure the card for direct sharing and don't want to ever use any of the online B.S. you still need to present a username and password.

Oh, and the EyeFi cards don't necessarily play nice with all USB card readers. EyeFi claims that they're completely compliant with the SD spec; they use some features in the spec that aren't commonly used by normal SD cards, and many readers don't support those features and thus don't work at all with the card. They bundle a reader with each card, but it just seems like an additional embuggerance. My netbook's builtin reader works quite happily with our card, but the same can't be said for the Sandisk reader I have on my desktop machine.

In the grand scheme of things it's not a bad little doodad. It's rough on older camera batteries (the additional drain when the thing transmits really causes older batteries to sag badly) and it sometimes takes a little while for both ends to notice each other and do the transfer, but it's kept the missus happy by being able to quickly share photos from our DSLR without having to bust out any other gear.

Still, the design decision to require logins to do anything with the card deserves a swift knee in the happysack to all involved in making said decision...

Stop thinking and just sign up for another online account you'll never use with a company who clearly has your privacy as its first priority. I mean, what kind of dinosaur doesn't want everything automatically uploaded to the cloud, shared on Facebook and auto tagged with your gaggle of friends. The company just wants what's best for you, don't you want what's best for you grandpa?

/sarcasm

Facebook and it's ilk couldn't die a horrible death fast enough, my only fear is what kind of monster will stand in its place.

The EyeFi cards look like a good idea after the marketing department go wind of it.

This is also my complaint about the Looxcie headset camera (well, this and the dumb name). It records video, but it will also broadcast it to your phone via Bluetooth. OK, great. Except that it will only broadcast video to their app and/or web site, which you then have to direct everyone to, as well as get them to register. Great, I just bought myself a tech support call from my family. If they had just made it appear as another camera, so it could be used with Skype or other video software, it would have been a great product. Instead I picked one up for $49.99 on closeout.

It does make a great BT headset with super-long battery life, if you don't really care that there's a camera sticking out of your ear.

And as for transferring files between devices, isn't this what Bluetooth was made for?

When configured for direct mode, the EyeFi cards also present themselves as a WiFi network that you connect your phone/whatever to. The retarded thing is, just as Jon discovered, to configure the card or to fire up the app (on iOS at least) you need to have an account with them.

Unfortunately I was oblivious to all this when we got ours a couple of years ago. I used a throwaway spam account to sign up; doing that didn't make it any less irritating that they're basically set up to demand that you register with them, but it did mean that they didn't get anything useful from me.

The stupidity continues when you get to their Windows client. Even if you only want to configure the card for direct sharing and don't want to ever use any of the online B.S. you still need to present a username and password.

Oh, and the EyeFi cards don't necessarily play nice with all USB card readers. EyeFi claims that they're completely compliant with the SD spec; they use some features in the spec that aren't commonly used by normal SD cards, and many readers don't support those features and thus don't work at all with the card. They bundle a reader with each card, but it just seems like an additional embuggerance. My netbook's builtin reader works quite happily with our card, but the same can't be said for the Sandisk reader I have on my desktop machine.

In the grand scheme of things it's not a bad little doodad. It's rough on older camera batteries (the additional drain when the thing transmits really causes older batteries to sag badly) and it sometimes takes a little while for both ends to notice each other and do the transfer, but it's kept the missus happy by being able to quickly share photos from our DSLR without having to bust out any other gear.

Still, the design decision to require logins to do anything with the card deserves a swift knee in the happysack to all involved in making said decision...

This is what happens when boardroom meetings focus on quarterly reports and "monetization" towards an eventual exit strategy that puts a premium on making investors rich and sends the people who work for said investors scrambling for their own small piece of the pie, all within a 2-5 year horizon. I don't know if that is the case with the company behind Eye-Fi in particular but it wouldn't surprise me.

I should know, I'm in enough of those meetings. "Look, Google/Amazon/etc, we have tons of users! They are forced to use our own walled garden! That's gotta be worth another step in the valuation multiplier, right?"

I blame Google and the whole "if we make it attractive to Google they will pay us a ton of cash and we can go live on an island" mentality for at least part of this recent trend among small tech companies.

Have you tried using the Transcend card with a GoPro Hero video camera? GoPros (prior models, not the newest one) have an add on WiFi module that runs an extra $80 and makes the camera physically bigger. Something like this could be very useful.

Have you tried using the Transcend card with a GoPro Hero video camera? GoPros (prior models, not the newest one) have an add on WiFi module that runs an extra $80 and makes the camera physically bigger. Something like this could be very useful.

Oh my god, I so hate that bullshit. Anything that requires me to open an account for no real, useful reason goes back to the store. And don't give me the "enhances users’ experiences" bullshit. Yeah, like DRM was enhancing our experience too.

I have started to avoid cloud services because there are hidden costs to them.

A month ago I got an pop up on my browser on my home computer from my ISP telling me I had hit the data cap on my home internet account. I would have to start paying for every extra gig I used for another week or so until the end of the billing period.

I have a 120G / month limit. I looked at my history. I work from home through a VPN and use Netflix almost every day, and usually rent movies from iTunes the other days. With all that, I normally only use about 60-75% of my limit. But that month my usage had spiked. Even worse, it was all in the upload: I was uploading 4-5 G a day.

After some searching about, I discovered the culprit was the iCloud Backup on my iPad. Something had gone wrong with it. I'm not sure what. I did notice that it would not update the Date of the Last Backup, so I think it just kept trying to run the backup over and over again.

I immediately cut off as many of the iCloud service as I could. Really, it isn't that hard to plug the iPad into my computer and do a manual backup.

I know that was just a bug, but there is no way to guarantee it would not happen again. And given how many devices want to connect to the cloud, I just don't want to use it unless there is any real value in it. There is no way I'd want to plug a camera, with those huge picture files, into a cloud account. I couldn't afford it.

My husband bought me a Eye-Fi card last Christmas, the idea sounded dumb and I pouted over such a dumb gift. I finally decided to try it in about March and quickly fell in love with it. I take a lot of photos for my online store. This really speeds stuff. I don't bother with the online tools.

If I was going to get uptight about online accounts, I wouldn't be responding - I had to register and set up an account to be able to post. Basically to do anything online you need to set up an account.

I have an Eye-Fi (the cheapest one sans any frills) which I use and am pretty much pleased with the device. In SanDisk/EyeFi's defense, the login information helps in cases where you multiple cards that need to be managed centrally (not my case) as well as other obscure situations (you want to protect 3rd party access tokens and whatnot). Having used their configuration utility, I could see where their PM came up with the prerequisite account idea.

Alas, I think this is going to happen more and more. Case in point: The JAWBONE ERA Bluetooth headset. You *must* register at the Jawbone website to configure it. It's a freagin' headset (albeit a good one), it's not even an Internet device, and still, you can't update its firmware or configure it to do anything (other than basic pairing) without a browser and account. Ridiculous, but it certainly a trend.

My husband bought me a Eye-Fi card last Christmas, the idea sounded dumb and I pouted over such a dumb gift. I finally decided to try it in about March and quickly fell in love with it. I take a lot of photos for my online store. This really speeds stuff. I don't bother with the online tools.

If I was going to get uptight about online accounts, I wouldn't be responding - I had to register and set up an account to be able to post. Basically to do anything online you need to set up an account.

As an owner of a Razer mouse, it drove me crazy that I needed ANOTHER online account to save my settings. First we get DRM in our games, next it comes in our devices. Companies are getting way too invasive to track stats on their customers.

We need better laws to prevent being forced to sign up. I don't want an account for every darn appliance in my house.

My husband bought me a Eye-Fi card last Christmas, the idea sounded dumb and I pouted over such a dumb gift. I finally decided to try it in about March and quickly fell in love with it. I take a lot of photos for my online store. This really speeds stuff. I don't bother with the online tools.

If I was going to get uptight about online accounts, I wouldn't be responding - I had to register and set up an account to be able to post. Basically to do anything online you need to set up an account.

Yes, doing anything online requires an account. But the author's point was that he couldn't use the card offline, never touching the internet, without signing up for an account with them. That's pretty obnoxious. I have dozens of worthless online accounts, required before I could do some minor thing, and never touched again. The other day a company wanted me to connect my Facebook account to register a warranty. Saywhat??

Your point about registering to post the comment is noted (and funny) though.

The article makes it sound like there's a card called "Transcend" out there. Transcend is actually a memory company (one like Sandisk and such) that's as old as dirt (dirt that formed in 1988, anyway), they just happen to make a wifi SD card.

Eye-fi it kind of makes sense, they make one product (and they brand it that way), but the article is really weird to read when you consider Transcend is the company name, not the product name.

Well, in case of Eye-Fi, even if you go offline only, there are a few reasons to make an account. * Relay mode means that in cases where your PC is off, the card will send the photos to the server and your PC will download them the next time its on. No need to keep both on at the same time which is a time saver. Then again, this could probably be implemented w/o an account, but I find it a huge timesaver.

On the other hand, if you had created an account, you'd find the implementation of downloading photos to your phone to be stupid. You configure the card to either:* Send all photos to PC* Send all photos to PhoneThere's nothing in between unless you send use another method to sync photos from phone back to PC or use and SD card reader.

They totally missed the market of people who want all photos on the PC, but occasionally browse photos on the camera to upload to FB. I asked them about that, and their solution is to use selective upload where u mark photo on the camera as protected or something.

The article makes it sound like there's a card called "Transcend" out there. Transcend is actually a memory company (one like Sandisk and such) that's as old as dirt (dirt that formed in 1988, anyway), they just happen to make a wifi SD card.

Eye-fi it kind of makes sense, they make one product (and they brand it that way), but the article is really weird to read when you consider Transcend is the company name, not the product name.

True. It's their wireless card that's new. It came out in November. Did they have one before that? I think this was their first Wi-Fi SD card, and the iOS and Android apps came out for the first time as well.

Edit: I guess you're saying the card isn't called Transcend? Well, the card says Transcend in giant letters, bigger than anything else, so that seems to be the name. "Transcend Wi-Fi SD Card."

The really annoying thing about Eye-Fi is even if you aren't using their sharing service, you have to use the cloud-based stuff, because it's not actually uploading your photos directly to your computer - it's uploading them to the cloud service, and your computer is downloading them from there. Which really, REALLY sucks if you're on a low-upstream DSL connection.

And you can't even make it faster by plugging the card directly into your computer; it still has to go round-trip to the servers. Or you can download the images directly off the card, in that case, but then you don't get the geotagging.

The article makes it sound like there's a card called "Transcend" out there. Transcend is actually a memory company (one like Sandisk and such) that's as old as dirt (dirt that formed in 1988, anyway), they just happen to make a wifi SD card.

Eye-fi it kind of makes sense, they make one product (and they brand it that way), but the article is really weird to read when you consider Transcend is the company name, not the product name.

True. It's their wireless card that's new. It came out in November. Did they have one before that? I think this was their first Wi-Fi SD card, and the iOS and Android apps came out for the first time as well.

Edit: I guess you're saying the card isn't called Transcend? Well, the card says Transcend in giant letters, bigger than anything else, so that seems to be the name. "Transcend Wi-Fi SD Card."

The article makes it sound like there's a card called "Transcend" out there. Transcend is actually a memory company (one like Sandisk and such) that's as old as dirt (dirt that formed in 1988, anyway), they just happen to make a wifi SD card.

Eye-fi it kind of makes sense, they make one product (and they brand it that way), but the article is really weird to read when you consider Transcend is the company name, not the product name.

My prior experience with Transcend is that it has the absolute worst engineering, they are slow, their flash drives exhibit the worst "wear algorithm", moving whole clusters instead of just sectors or instead of just pointers and no compatibility with any file format other than FAT.

My husband bought me a Eye-Fi card last Christmas, the idea sounded dumb and I pouted over such a dumb gift. I finally decided to try it in about March and quickly fell in love with it. I take a lot of photos for my online store. This really speeds stuff. I don't bother with the online tools.

If I was going to get uptight about online accounts, I wouldn't be responding - I had to register and set up an account to be able to post. Basically to do anything online you need to set up an account.

The night that I received my eye-fi, I couldn't get it connected. It kept telling me to get closer to my wifi access point. I trouble shooted (trouble-shot?) the wifi connection problem for several hours trying different configurations.

I gave up and called their support line. It turns out that their api servers were down, and the card was misreporting a problem with my wifi configuration instead of telling me it couldn't phone home to master control.

I hated everything about the experience, so I boxed it up and returned it. I wish I could get a refund on my wasted time.

My husband bought me a Eye-Fi card last Christmas, the idea sounded dumb and I pouted over such a dumb gift. I finally decided to try it in about March and quickly fell in love with it. I take a lot of photos for my online store. This really speeds stuff. I don't bother with the online tools.

If I was going to get uptight about online accounts, I wouldn't be responding - I had to register and set up an account to be able to post. Basically to do anything online you need to set up an account.

IRAL

I wasted time trying to figure out what you meant and I'm still not sure. I want those minutes back.

I think it's an interesting concept, especially if you get instant review on the other device. Nikon doesn't have very good solutions for it (my brand new D7000 is a great example, there isn't one). They have the WU-1a and the WU-1b which are about $60 for other cameras but reviews don't seem to be happy about it. I've seen a couple EyeFi users post that they're happy with it in the second slot, but I'm not keen on signing up for a pointless account (and need more good reviews).

Thanks for a timely account. I was about to spring for one and am not going to buy one because of this exact behavior.Whatever happened to simple "appliance" like behavior of these devices.Why does everything have to cram down a requirement for some link to some online service down every consumers throat.Every such device maker thinks they want this list of their end consumers/users rather than the place where that consumer bought the device in the first place (or the payment merchant).More importantly they make this a stupid door which can only be opened if I register.

To all the folks who think it is just the order of the day to register for an account....let me posit a thought exercise.

Would you buy a toaster tomorrow if the maker required you to "register" at their website (who of course has your "best" interest at heart) before you could even plug it in? Imagine for a minute that there was some magical shrinkwrap around the plug which would magically drop off once you register. Only then you could use the toaster!Would you buy it?Would you? Really?

I've gotta say, I've been using eye-fi cards for a few years (in both point and shoots for my wife, and a DSLR for me). Sure, you have to create an account, but frankly, it was absolutely worth it to me. I picked my first card up when Google had a partnership with them that gave you a year of storage for Picasaweb, and I've been using it (and subsequent cards) ever since. I've been COMPLETELY happy with my eye-fi cards. I guess I've just gotten to the point where I have accounts for everything (EXCEPT social networks, I pretty much refuse to use Facebook and Twitter), so creating one more didn't bother me.

Sadly, this trend has infected some desktop software as well... including stuff that otherwise has absolutely no need for internet access.

A lot of applications which have perfectly good offline capability unnecessarily require you to sign up for an online "account", even if you have no use for anything "networked". And some like to "call home" every time you run the program... not all of them just to check for updates.

This is beyond irritating. It really pisses me off. I have round-filed quite a few programs that would have been very nice and useful, if not for that "feature".

The problem with this is what happens when Eye-Fi company goes out of business. What will happen to those users that depends on the cloud service to be available. And what happens to the all the excess stock? Until someone hack the firmware...useless...

It's almost as bad as online required DRM for games or Steam where you need to be online to get offline mode to play a singleplayer game. And if you lose power or connection you can't go offline mode after the fact.